Boeing announced it will move its space division’s headquarters to the central Florida coast, where NASA once launched rockets taking humans to the moon, to capitalize on President Trump’s investment in exploration beyond Earth’s orbit.
The Chicago-based aerospace contractor’s Space and Launch unit, now based in Arlington, Va., will be run from Titusville, a city of 46,000 that’s the closest neighbor to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center and has attracted a series of recent investments from the industry.
Blue Origin, the company formed by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, decided earlier this month to double the size of its Exploration Park, which will build the New Glenn space vehicle and oversee its takeoffs from a launch pad once used by Atlas-Centaur rockets. Lockheed Martin, which is constructing the Orion spacecraft to travel to Mars, said in 2016 it would broaden its Astrotech space operations in the city.
“The time is right for us to locate our space headquarters where so much of our space history was made over the past six decades and where so much history awaits,” Leanne Caret, head of the larger Boeing Defense, Space & Security business. “This storied Florida space community will be the center of gravity for Boeing’s space programs.”
The move will tighten collaboration between Boeing and NASA as the contractor builds the first two stages of a rocket that will take humans to the moon for the first time in 50 years. Boeing is also working on launch-system operations with Air Force personnel at Cape Canaveral and Patrick Air Force Base and preparing for flight tests of the CST-100 Starliner, a capsule intended to ferry people to and from the International Space Station.
“This is another piece of the puzzle that helps our economy grow stronger,” said Marcia Gaedcke, president of the Titusville Chamber of Commerce. The city is in northern Brevard County, which bills itself as the Space Coast and is also home to Patrick Air Force Base, the headquarters of the 15,000-member 45th Space Wing.
The city of Cocoa Beach, to the south, was the home of the fictional Maj. Anthony Nelson in the 1960s sitcom “I Dream of Jeannie.”
While the area struggled with widespread job losses when the 30-year space shuttle program ended during the Obama administration, it has rebounded as private companies stepped into the gap.
“We continue to work so hard on diversifying within aerospace and other industries to insulate our economy,” Gaedcke told the Washington Examiner. “With the change in the dynamic of the space environment, with commercialization and many companies vying for opportunities, there’s a new energy. It’s very different than the shuttle days.”
Boeing’s decision “affirms our state’s position as a national leader in innovation and job growth and will bring increased investment to the Space Coast,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said in a statement. “Florida is the world’s premiere gateway to space, and our commercial space industry continues to flourish.”
Boeing’s larger presence in the region presents new opportunities for Florida Tech, a private research university in nearby Melbourne that has an enrollment of 8,600 and was formed the same year as NASA.
About 400 of its alumni already work for the aerospace firm, which has provided scholarships and fellowships to dozens of students, and one graduate — Sunita Williams, who earned a master’s degree in engineering management — was chosen to fly on the Starliner’s first long-duration space mission.
The school looks forward to “supporting Boeing with workforce development, advanced degree programs for employees, research and development, and myriad other initiatives during this expansion and beyond,” said Gretchen Sauerman, vice president for research, corporate and government relations.
The headquarters move won’t affect Boeing space operations in other states including California and Texas, according to the company, which is also developing a space plane for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Known as the Phantom Express, it’s an unmanned craft designed to carry satellites from 400 to 1,300 kilograms into orbit, then return to Earth and be ready for another flight in a matter of hours.
Boeing and its rivals have all ramped up investment in space during the Trump administration. The president signed a defense budget in 2018 that included $1 billion for space programs and asked Congress to allocate another $8 billion for such efforts over the next five years.
